Abstract
STUDIES in this laboratory on the incorporation of carbon-14 precursors into corneal mucopolysac-charides necessitated the development of a method for the quantitative separation of labelled hexosamines in tissue hydrolysates. Other procedures1–3 employing column chromatography for quantitative resolution were not suitable for the analysis of large numbers of samples. The specific fermentation by bakers' yeast of D-glucose but not D-galactose4 and the reported phosphorylation of D-glucosamine by yeast hexokinase5 suggested the possibility of employing whole bakers' yeast for the separation of the naturally occurring amino-sugars, D-glucosamine and D-galactosamine. Experiments with bakers' yeast revealed a quantitative removal of D-glucosamine, as measured by colorimetric procedures, and no detectable utilization of D-galactosamine. In the present communication, we wish to describe a procedure for quantitative analysis of mixtures of these two sugars. Slein6 has reported the use of purified yeast hexokinase to distinguish between these hexosamines.
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POGELL, B., KOENIG, D. Analysis of Mixtures of Glucosamine and Galactosamine with Bakers' Yeast. Nature 182, 127–128 (1958). https://doi.org/10.1038/182127a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/182127a0
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